This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a truly inspiring talk with the activist, author, and free-spirited feminist folk icon Ani DiFranco, who just released her lushly orchestrated twenty-second album: Revolutionary Love.
Many things have been said about the music Ani DiFranco has created for the last thirty years since she burst on the scene with her fiery self-titled LP in 1990. With her shaved head on the cover, fearlessly bisexual love songs, dexterous guitar work and hold-no-prisoners lyrics sparing no one from her poetic magnifying glass, DiFranco’s persona became almost synonymous with a rejuvenated women’s movement that blossomed in the late-1990’s Lilith Fair moment. And yet she was always a bit more committed to the cause than some of her more pop-leaning contemporaries, who faded away as soon as their hits subsided.
Framing herself somewhere between the rebellious folk-singing teacher Pete Seeger and the gender-fluid show-stopping rock spirit in Prince, (who she recorded with after he became a fan,) DiFranco was always just as passionate about raising awareness for abortion rights, ensuring safety for gay and trans youth and bringing music to prisons, as she was promoting her latest musical experiment. She began playing publicly around age ten, and as a nineteen-year-old runaway from Buffalo, NY, she started her own label, Righteous Babe Records, that allowed her to operate free of corporate (and overwhelmingly male) oversight. Indeed, despite gaining a wide international fanbase she has released every album herself since the beginning — as well as championing genre-defying songwriters like Andrew Bird, Anaïs Mitchell, Utah Philips, and others. It was DiFranco’s encouragement that helped Mitchell’s opus Hadestown become a Tony-winning Broadway smash. DiFranco may have been deemed a bit too left-of-center for pop radio, but her beloved 1997 live record Living In Clip went gold.
Let’s get something out of the way real quick: was this male podcast host initially a bit intimidated to dive into her encyclopedic album collection after admiring her work from afar and believing the songs were not meant for his ears? Indeed. I grew up with girlfriends and fellow musicians who rocked Ani’s Righteous Babe pins and patches on their jean jackets like they were religious ornaments. What I found during this mind-bending conversation, and after listening to her polished and mystical newest record especially, was that DiFranco has never tried to push away people that don’t look or talk like her — or tried to mock or belittle conservative movements she doesn’t agree with or understand. There is a deep kindness and empathy in her songwriting that I never expected and in her 2019 autobiography, No Walls And The Recurring Dream, she acknowledges how lonely and exhausting it can be trying to fight against a societal tide that doesn’t want to stop and give you space to be who you are.
What became increasingly clear during our conversation was that DiFranco wants to make music for everyone. She prides herself on her quirky, multi-generational fanbase — with grandparents and kids, dads and sons, daughters and aunties alike singing along to favorites like “Both Hands,” “Untouchable Face,” and covers like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” at packed shows across three continents.
I had my own goosebumps-inducing moment singing with Ani that I’ll never forget. The oldest folk festival in America, The Ann Arbor Folk Fest, once put me on stage to sing harmony on “Angel From Montgomery” with DiFranco at the acoustically perfect Hill Auditorium. I attended the University Of Michigan years earlier and I saw John Prine sing that classic in that same room, and it felt like a full circle moment. Seeing how DiFranco transfixed the crowd that night, and how the women songwriters and musicians offstage especially watched her with such admiration made me want to see what her music — which I had never fully listened to — was all about.
If you have a chance, listen to Revolutionary Love start to finish, and stick around to the end of the episode to hear DiFranco read lyrics as poetry.
Artist:DL Rossi Hometown: Grand Rapids, Michigan Song: “Tumbling” Album:Lonesome Kind Release Date: April 16, 2021
In Their Words: “It was great to work with Jax Anderson on the music video for ‘Tumbling.’ We wanted to create a feeling of youth and innocence while introducing the harsher realities of life. ‘Tumbling’ is a song about realizing traditional norms don’t work out for all of us, but we still have a place in this world and can still find happiness that works for us. There is a specific and beautiful journey for each individual, and while we can’t ‘opt out’ of the hurtful experiences and memories, we can share our experiences and hopefully encourage and support each other. That’s what I hope people take away from this tune and the music video.” — DL Rossi
Kate Stables, principal of alternative roots outfit This Is the Kit, didn’t intend to write a pandemic album to follow her acclaimed 2017 debut, Moonshine Freeze. In fact, she wrote the entirety of Off Off On well before the term “COVID-19” entered our collective consciousness.
In the way that great art often can, though, the songs Stables wrote for Off Off On anticipated the needs of our current moment. Across 12 tracks, Stables sings of growth-inspiring personal reflection, the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of processing trauma, and continuing to move forward in the face of grief, all explored with deeply felt empathy and sharp insight.
Stables and her band recorded the bulk Off Off On prior to the COVID-19 lockdown alongside producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, the Hold Steady) at Real World Studios in the U.K. Sonically, the album builds atop the lush, banjo-driven alternative folk of Moonshine Freeze, with complex, often subtle arrangements that offer thoughtful soundscapes for Stables’ striking lyrics.
BGS caught up with Stables via Skype to discuss finding sources of inspiration, writing about difficult personal moments, and living as a musician during the COVID-19 lockdown.
BGS: To start us off, everyone has had their own specific difficulties resulting from the pandemic, but musicians, especially, have been dealt a tough blow. How has that affected you and how have you adjusted to being home more, and not being able to tour this record?
Stables: At first, it was kind of novel and a bit of a relief, almost. For the first summer in living memory, I didn’t have loads of festivals to do. So it was a summer I spent with my family doing family stuff instead. So that was nice, at first. Now that the time for actual touring would have been starting soon but it isn’t starting soon, it feels a bit weird. It’s the longest amount of time I’ve ever gone without playing gigs and without touring. So it feels really weird and I miss doing gigs so much. And I really miss my band. They’re in the U.K. and I’m in France. I’ve never gone this long without seeing them.
With regard to the album, you wrote and completed the majority of it before the pandemic started. What were the origins of the album and how has its meaning evolved for you since you first began plotting it?
I don’t usually have a pre-album vision. It’s normally just me writing songs as and when they come and seeing what kind of shape it all takes along the way. One of the earliest songs that was written for this album was “Started Again.” “Started Again” is almost a bit of a bridge song from the last album to this album, because I feel like it could have gone on either, in terms of what I was thinking about. It feels like it’s connected to my past life, in a way, because I feel like everyone has a new type of life now. The world has passed through this strange portal and we’re all a bit different and have to adapt to things. It’s not an obviously key song on this album… but it’s also a bit linked to my thinking about perseverance and getting through the difficulties and coming out the other side again and again. It’s funny because that’s also what the world seems to be dealing with at the moment. Those are themes that accidentally came out while writing the album, without knowing that COVID-19 was coming.
I read the track-by-track notes that you wrote for the album, and one line that stuck out to me was, “Listening through to these recordings, I hear new COVID-19 references every day.” Could you elaborate on that? I heard some myself when I was listening, but am curious as to which resonated with you.
Partly there’s the “we’ve all got to get through this” that I was dealing with in the album, which now seems like I’m talking about COVID. There are lines like, “Try not to cough.” That is too ridiculous and coincidental. There’s a song about a hospital and the breathing apparatus in the hospital; that felt spooky, now that so many people are in hospitals than ever before. Things that were written with one story in mind and now this new situation has given them another story.
I’ve talked to a few other artists who have had similar experiences. It’s interesting, because obviously no one could have predicted where we are now, but it does make you wonder if you were intuiting that we were collectively going down this road.
Yeah, are we all tuned into something that we don’t know about? It does feel weird. I think also with writing, and you may get this in your work, you do end up with funny coincidences and predicting the future accidentally sometimes. It’s just the way it goes when you’re working with words and language and storytelling, whether it’s journalism or fiction or songwriting. These weird cosmic moments do happen.
One of my favorite tracks, both sonically and lyrically, is “This Is What You Did.” How did you write that one?
Writing it was fun because it was an example of me playing with rhythm, which is my favorite thing to do. I tried to find a banjo-picking pattern that was quite hard, something I almost couldn’t do, and worked until I got it. I tried to find a pattern where I wasn’t using the same fingers every time, something as random as possible. The beats were regular but the strings I was picking were somewhat randomly generated. Then I tried to find vocal rhythms that were difficult for me to sing at the same time. I guess it was like brain gymnastics. I like it when you can’t tell where a pattern starts and finishes. … That repetitive, cyclical nature of the music lent itself to this mind-loop approach with the lyrics.
Reading through your notes about “No Such Thing,” you reference both Jack Kornfield and Jane Austen as inspirations. How do you find inspiration? Do you always have your antenna up?
Language is the material I work in and I really enjoy exploring other people’s work with language. When I hear a phrase that makes me laugh or that sounds pleasing to say out loud, I’m always noting down little quotes of things that make a spark in my brain, even if it’s something out of Bob’s Burgers or something… So I guess I do always have a bit of a radar up for rhymes, assonance alliteration; things like that make my ears prick up.
When you reach the point in your writing process when you’re ready to fully arrange a song, what does your collaboration with your band look like? They’re such fantastic players and it sounds like you’re all quite close.
Sometimes I have a bit of an idea of the vibe or the kind of pace that I was envisaging for a song, but it’s also nice to not say anything until they’ve tried something out. Quite often they’ll find something that’s better than what I had in mind. I’ve ended up with three of my favorite musicians playing in my band, which feels like a privilege and a real kind of fluke. So it’s nice to let them do their own thing as much as possible. I’d be interested to know, though, if they think that’s what I do. Maybe they think I’m really controlling. [Laughs] What I hope I do is let them have space to do their stuff.
Prior to lockdown, you got to spend a lot of time on the road with the National. How does playing as part of someone else’s project inform your work as a solo artist?
In a few ways, but it’s hard to put your finger on one. Traveling is nutritious for me in terms of writing and wellbeing and being inspired. The act of traveling, even just looking out the window while you’re going along the road, is inspiring. But also the fact that you’re going to different places and meeting new people and having these new experiences… Also just seeing how other people work. I found it fascinating to be part of this symbiotic ecosystem that’s going around on tour. Everyone plays an important part and looks out for each other and it’s really fascinating to see how other people tour.
It’s a bit tricky to look too far ahead right now, but, in addition to getting your album out, what are you looking forward to in the coming months?
Because the gigs aren’t there to be looked forward to, I think I’m looking forward to seeing what I can get done instead. There are a lot of musical projects that I’d love to get stuck into, and I hope that I just will. This time, we’re all learning how to be ready for anything and not to assume that something is going to happen, so, ideally, I’ll just be making music instead of touring. I really hope I’ll be able to make music with people, even if it’s long-distance.
Lydia Loveless wrote her fifth studio album, Daughter, after a self-confessed period of personal upheaval. The dissolution of a marriage and an interstate move away from her longtime home of Columbus, Ohio, left her seeking to redefine herself both inwardly and societally. Released independently, Daughter presents an electric balance of deep vulnerability and power, replete with wry humor and honest, unadorned regret.
Recorded by Tom Schick (Mavis Staples, Norah Jones, Wilco) at The Loft in Chicago, Daughter features anthemic hooks and reflective moments of spaciousness. With Loveless writing on keyboards, synths and drum loops, the work comes together to present a group of compelling songs that create a treatise on selfhood, womanhood, hypocrisies of Western society, and the reverberant pain and joy of being human. Loveless spoke with BGS from her North Carolina home about the album she considers her most personal one yet.
BGS: Daughter lays out so many emotions and states of being that women are usually cut off from expressing — there’s a lot of sardonic humor, a lot of anger and frustration, there’s this rejection that every woman should have maternal desires. I love these very plain descriptions of living with depression, and the vocals sit right on top of the mix so you can hear every single word you’re saying. What was your internal process like while writing these songs?
Loveless: I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a sad sack. [Laughs] But I always couched it with humor. I feel like I found my place on this record with that. Because I’ve had a lot of people say that it’s… they don’t really say that it’s funny, but they can sense a lot of the humor and sarcasm in it. So I feel like I got to a solid place with that and I was probably reading a lot of depressing old ‘60s writers [Laughs] so that helped pull the content along I think.
In Daughter, you write very honestly about how your personal and professional life has shifted in the last three years — a move and the end of a marriage. What is it like to make a piece of art that dealt directly with that change?
It was super cathartic. I feel particularly excited about it and confident in it because it’s a self-release so it pretty much has got my stamp all over it. I think the idea that it’s up to me to make it more successful has had some sort of reverse psychology. Like I’m not very freaked out, I’m just excited and proud, and happy with the whole process.
One of the aspects of this record that I love are the variances in instrumentation and gear — the drum loops and keys as well as analog synths. It adds this whole other dimension to the album. How did these different instruments affect the way you write, if at all?
I think it helped me a lot to come up with better melody and more focused songwriting. I think in the past I’ve always been a very hard guitar player. [Laughs] It’s not like I don’t like that or that I’m embarrassed by it, but I wanted to try something different. I felt like it opened things up a lot. The whole band was playing every instrument except the drums because we’re not all that good. [Laughs] It was very exploratory and it helped me to give the songs a lot more space than I usually do.
Is that something that you’re hoping to continue?
Yeah. I feel like every time I make a record, the only way I really break through my inevitable period of writer’s block is by doing something that I don’t know how to do, so that I can learn it and be inspired by the newness of it. I’m sure I’ll run out of things like that eventually but I think it’s what helps me stay mentally in shape, for sure.
In past interviews you’ve talked about having been totally exhausted by touring. What was it like to sort of…stop? Because right now, many of us are at home dealing with having to be still. It’s very jarring for a lot of people. What was your experience with stillness in making Daughter and also now, during the pandemic?
It’s pretty tough, because the thing I miss the most about regular life is traveling and touring. Not necessarily going to the bar or getting dinner at a restaurant. I just miss being somewhere else all the time [Laughs], because that’s my natural state. It’s definitely something that I’ve had to work really hard on not going crazy with. Because it’s something I really enjoy — so that’s been the hardest part… not being able to just go random places and hop on a plane or go to the beach or whatever, you know?
Do you have three records, books, or movies that you’re enjoying right now and would recommend to readers?
I’m reading My Brilliant Friend right now. I’m studying Italian so I wanted to read something set in Italy — not that I’m reading in Italian. [Laughs] It’s great writing and the characters are very real. My movie watching has been lots of cornball thrillers. I think everyone should see Face/Off at some point in their life to feel better about their creative endeavors. Musically, I’ve been listening to a lot of Harry Styles. I’m a basic, basic human.
This record is a compelling statement on feminism, and specifically the concept that women only have worth insofar as they can be associated relationally with a man, as a daughter, wife, sister, etc. What do you hope people take from this record — this listening experience?
I think a lot of people have been frustrated with that whole “it’s somebody’s daughter” thing for a long time. I’m sure there’s been commentary on it, but I just have personally struggled with it for so long. So I am glad that I was able to get it down in a sonically pleasing — to me — way. [Laughs] So hopefully other people find it not just moving, lyrically, but think of it as a set of solid songs instead of just me screaming into the ether about how much it sucks that people don’t get feminism!
You’ve said that “Love Is Not Enough” is the closest to a political song you’ve been able to write thus far. What are you hoping to communicate with listeners through that song specifically?
I mean, I guess it’s sort of a grumpy song. But yeah, I think we’re all going through that right now. Everyone’s taking a lot more action than before and I don’t think we can really fool ourselves of this idea that if we just vote and say kind words, everything will be okay. [Laughs] There’s a lot more work to do. I think that society is really maybe finally coming together in that sense. But I also feel like this is in some ways my most personal record ever. And I think in some ways that makes it a lot more relatable. I feel like the more personal something is, the more people can connect with it. That’s my hope.
Artist:Josiah Johnson Hometown: San Francisco, California Song: “Woman in a Man’s Life” Album:Every Feeling on a Loop Release Date: September 4, 2020 Label: ANTI- Records
In Their Words: “We are beginning as a culture to reckon with gender roles and expectations, different standards and power dynamics. As someone who can fall back on presenting pretty straight, but has known I’m queer for a long time, I have been in process shedding my internalized homophobia and claiming my sensitivity, nurturing nature, my yin qualities as strengths. So when I sing ‘I’m a woman in a man’s life,’ it holds empowerment for me.
“I’ve learned to love my process. I’ve learned to love when I’ve taken the long way and where I get to admit mistakes. Humility and uncertainty are welcome. Being seen for who I am and where I’m at is my priority. And I am exactly where I am supposed to be. The result of that new courage bears out in how I’m able to be a better friend to the people I love. That’s the gift.” — Josiah Johnson
Artist:Juni Ata Hometown: Nashville now; born in Cuyamaca, California Song: “Philadelphia” Album:Saudade Release Date: August 21, 2020 Label: Flying On Fire Records
In Their Words: “’Philadelphia’ is a personal story that tells of when I lost the love of my life as a younger man. We grew up in a tiny town of about 60 people, living across a meadow from one another. When we left school, she moved to Philadelphia for a job and I was supposed to follow immediately. I never got that Subaru Forester into Drive, for a multitude of reasons — some legitimate, some not. Ultimately, ‘Philadelphia’ is a song that uses the City of Brotherly Love as a symbol for all the places to which we have not yet traveled, but would still like to get to. If only in the reckoning and redemption of our past missteps. Whether or not we ever get there is intentionally left open-ended. Simply arriving upon a moment of truth whereby we are even able to identify the place where our heart — and destiny — lies, well… sometimes we never even get that far in our journey. Ultimately we are in command of our own victory, and regret.” — Juni Ata
Artist:Josh Ritter Hometown: Brooklyn, New York Song: “Time Is Wasting” Album:See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion Release Date: August 28, 2020 Label: Pytheas Recordings
In Their Words: “See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion is a collection of songs and performances that I love from the previous several years. I did the artwork a while back, and the title just popped into my head. I’ve really been missing making music with my band. On record or live, it’s always an adventure.
“I wrote ‘Time Is Wasting’ for a movie. The song didn’t get used, but I ended up thinking about it again as COVID lockdown stretched away in front of us. The rest of the songs soon fell into place behind it. There is a lot of time and distance and farewell on these recordings.” — Josh Ritter
For Black Americans, this day, Juneteenth, has long been a celebration of the momentous historical event of emancipation from slavery — and the nearly two and a half years it took for that news to reach all enslaved peoples in this country. Juneteenth is belatedly gaining wider recognition and arrives at a time of reckoning with systemic patterns of white supremacy, especially police brutality, that remain deeply entrenched.
Like many waves of national protest before it, the uprising in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and many others has spurred the creation of its own soundtrack, and the following list spotlights the contributions of seven roots-savvy, Black music makers. Some draw on lessons learned from how songs gave spiritual succor to those on the front lines of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle, with righteously raised fists and declarations of passion and purpose. Others opt for expression that feels far more personalized or particular, articulating an adamantly complex range of emotions and letting profoundly unsettled, and unsettling, questions hang in the air. All of them are fleshing out their own vivid, timely incarnations of movement music.
Leon Bridges specializes in sophisticated soul, sometimes artfully retro in presentation and other times landing at the thoroughly contemporary end of that musical lineage. His new song “Sweeter” is an example of the latter, two minutes and 50 seconds during which his buttery vocals glide over a lean drum machine pattern, delicate, gospel-dusted bits of guitar, keyboard, piano and bass and Terrace Martin’s saxophone figures. Bridges’ words land with the devastated finality of a black man whose life is leaving his body, taken from him by police. “I thought we moved on from the darker days,” he sings, his cadence fluttery and tone ruminative. “Did the words of the King disappear in the air, like a butterfly?” The blame-laying next line arrives in a burst: “Somebody should hand you a felony.”
Then, Bridges elongates his phrasing with righteous indignation, before steadying himself to spell out the loss: “‘Cause you stole from me/my chance to be.” The elegance he chose gives his performance subtly striking, emotional heft. “From adolescence we are taught how to conduct ourselves when we encounter police to avoid the consequences of being racially profiled,” Bridges wrote in a statement. “I have been numb for too long, calloused when it came to the issues of police brutality. The death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. It was the first time I wept for a man I never met. I am George Floyd, my brothers are George Floyd, and my sisters are George Floyd. I cannot and will not be silent any longer. Just as Abel’s blood was crying out to God, George Floyd is crying out to me.”
Chastity Brown has been honing her ability to create space for emotional resistance within her songs for a while now. She draws on the pointed, confessional potential of folk and soul and the digital texturing techniques of contemporary pop and hip-hop, while depicting the patient pursuit and safekeeping of self-knowledge as a sign of strength — one that differs wildly from the sort of dominance modeled by systemic power.
In her new song “Golden,” created on her iPad in her garage studio and shared with the world this week, Brown sounds willfully unhurried singing over a skittery programmed beat: “I’ve got joy, even when I’m a target/If ya think that’s political, don’t get me started/You know I’m golden and I flaunt it.” That savoring of selfhood is in striking contrast to the furious question she circles around during the chorus: “Why have I got to be angry?”
In the artist notes accompanying the song, Brown explained that she began writing it when her nephew was beaten by four white cops while walking home in Harlem, mere weeks before George Floyd died in her adopted hometown. “This collective trauma that black, indigenous, immigrant, and queer/trans folk feel is real,” she spelled out. “It’s every god damn day. Yet, we still thrive and flourish in our nature beauty, we still have swag and songs for days. We still have wild and wondrous imaginations like we are all the children of Octavia [Butler]. …This is for me, my people, and the UPRISING to defund police here in Minneapolis and thereby set a new standard for how communities want to be protected.”
Shemekia Copeland, one of the brightest stars in contemporary blues, has been deliberate for years about broadening her repertoire and approach to encompass countrified styles, singer-songwriter song sources and statement-making folk and soul sensibilities and, in the process, positioning herself in the midst of roots music discourse. That’s the insightful perspective she brings to her just-released “Uncivil War,” whose string band style accompaniment boasts the contributions of Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas.
Coming from Copeland, and delivered with measured, dignified vibrato, the simple flipping of the name of the nation’s most notorious war to “uncivil” slyly strips a veneer of respectability from the racist and romanticized Lost Cause religion. She strikes a tone of weary but resolute optimism throughout. “It’s not just a song,” she clarified in a statement. “I’m trying to put the ‘united’ back in the United States. Like many people, I miss the days when we treated each other better. For me, this country’s all about people with differences coming together to be part of something we all love. That’s what really makes America beautiful.”
Kam Franklin, on her own and with her Houston horn band The Suffers, has the wide-ranging musical instincts, imagination, nerve, and ear for earthy verisimilitude to make big statements while zeroing in on small interactions. A couple of weeks back, she posted a brand new, self-recorded song fragment to SoundCloud, a platform well suited to off-the-cuff expression, and with it, this comment: “I saw a photo of Breonna Taylor with her homegirls earlier today, and it gutted me. I won’t forget her. I wrote this birthday song for her, her friends that wondered where she was before the news came out, and everyone that loved her.”
Titled “Happy Birthday Breonna,” it’s a pensive, sinuous bit of ‘70s soul that drives home the fact that Taylor was ripped from a web of close relationships. The first, and only verse, lands like a voicemail from a friend who grew worried when she couldn’t reach Taylor. Franklin’s graceful trills and softly insistent phrasing have an understatement that suggests fretful preoccupation. Then she moves into a point-counterpoint refrain, murmuring birthday wishes to Taylor in her breathy upper register and making a devastating declaration beneath: “You should be here.”
Singer-guitarist and actor Celisse Henderson began work on writing, recording, and filming a video for her song “FREEDOM” four years ago, following the slayings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, and watched as black deaths and protest momentum multiplied before she finally completed and released her project earlier this month.
In a message on her website, Henderson explained, “I, along with millions of people, watched video footage of these unarmed black men losing their lives in the most horrific ways. The truth that these unjust deaths revealed about our country, including the systemic failings of our criminal justice system, became my personal call-to-action. Then the 2016 election night happened, and the results added a whole new layer to the purpose of this song and project. Now, almost four years later, too little has been done, and the story remains the same. With the horrific and unjust killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd weighing heavily on our hearts and minds, it is time to release ‘FREEDOM’ as a rallying cry and a call to action to stand up and fight for our freedom.”
Historic footage of the March on Washington that opens the clip is a reminder of the buoying role that spirituals played in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and serves the narrative function of positioning Henderson to measure the too-meager progress for Black Americans since. The track is gospel-schooled and hard-rocking, powered by a thunderous, syncopated drum pattern and grinding electric guitar attack. With gospel fervor and a touch of theatrical flourish, Henderson summons a spirit of urgency and extends a broad welcome to all who are affected or disturbed by injustice.
Joy Oladokun, a Nigerian-American singer-songwriter who’s quietly carving out her place in Nashville’s professional songwriting community with introspective, melancholy warmth, steered a co-writing appointment with Natalie Hemby toward an expression of grief. The result was “Who Do I Turn To?” a naked airing of fear and distrust.
Oladokun’s reedy, plaintive performance is accompanied only by minimal piano chords. She spends the chorus adding up horrifying realizations that lead her to a resounding question: “If I can’t save myself/If it’s all black and white/If I can’t call for help/in the middle of the night/If I can’t turn to god/If I can’t turn to you/Who do I turn to?” Her voice subtly catches on the word “help,” as though knowing that life-giving protection is unavailable to her constricts her breath. Oladokun underscored the importance of the chorus lyrics to an interviewer: “[I]t’s illustrating that I don’t trust the police since I’m black. I don’t trust the police enough to know that they would think I’m not robbing my own home. I don’t think a lot of people understand what that is like. The feeling sucks.” In a separate statement she summarized her intent: “I wanted to write a firsthand account of how I feel and the question black people like me ask when this happens over and over again while nothing changes. I want it out now to help an already traumatized people cope, heal, and put words to their struggle.”
Wyatt Waddell, a young Chicago music-maker who’s been expertly, wittily, and self-sufficiently arranging home recordings of classic covers and singer-songwriter soul originals for the past few years, wrote “FIGHT!” as an anthem of admiration and uplift for young, Black Americans putting their bodies on the line in the streets and facing off against police force to agitate for change. “This song is me looking at what’s happening and what I’d tell the people protesting,” he specified in a statement. “I had to look outside of myself at what’s going on and how people are being affected. Hearing people’s fears, anxieties, and watching everything happening on TV really helped me write the song. I hope that it can be an anthem for my people as they’re fighting for a better America.”
Waddell begins with gospel-style repetition, creating a call-and-response pattern made up of his own layered vocals over a churchly foot stomp and hand clap groove: “There’s already so much pain/So much pain/So much pain/There’s already so much pain/And there ain’t nothin’ else we can do.” It seems like he could be building up to a confession of helplessness; instead, his funky refrain is bolstered by a sense of resolve and inevitability: “Nothin’ to do but fight.”
Photo credit: (L to R) Shemekia Copeland by Mike White; Chastity Brown by Wale Agboola; Leon Bridges by Jack McKain.
Artist:Jill Andrews Hometown: Johnson City, Tennessee; currently Nashville, Tennessee Song: “The Kids Are Growing Up” Album:Thirties Label: Vulture, Vulture / Tone Tree
In Their Words: “I snuck away one day during my daughter’s nap to write ‘The Kids Are Growing Up.’ My son and daughter are seven years apart and everyday in both of them, I saw this theme personified. She was tiny in my arms just like he used to be. I wrote it as a reminder to myself to slow down and try to be present for the important moments, the ones that really matter. The video comes from ten found film reels donated to the Prelinger Archives in San Francisco. Nobody knows who the family is but based on the footage they lived in the St. Louis area. In the video, you see a family go through marriage, birth of their first child, raising children, holidays, marrying off their first child, and then their first grandchild being born. It so perfectly fits the theme of the song. I truly cannot believe that the filmmaker, Nathaniel Maddux, found the footage and that this family kept such amazing archives of their lives. He said he really hopes that someone sees the video and lets us know who they are!” — Jill Andrews
Artist:Brian Dunne Hometown: Brooklyn, New York Song: “Harlem River Drive” Album:Selling Things Release Date: April 10. 2020
In Their Words: “‘Harlem River Drive’ is a song about contentment and the things that stand in the way of it. It was born out of this feeling of being forever stuck on the precipice of something big, ultimately driving you to the edge of your sanity. That’s what the song is about to me; missing the present — either in anticipation of the future, or in romanticism of the past — and the consequences that come along with that. But there’s resolution in the song. I do believe there is hope for us yet, or something like that.” — Brian Dunne
Photo credit: Adam Gardner
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